Physical and Cognitive
Development
• Changes in behavior and structure
from womb to tomb – We focus on
childhood because more is known
about that stage but it is now clear
that there are interesting changes
across the life span.
• Embryological development – all
young look pretty much alike in early
stages – Differentiation of structure
and behavior.
Cognitive Development
Intro Psychology
Georgia Tech
Instructor: Dr. Bruce Walker
Physical and Cognitive
Development
• Humans are born “less mature” than most other animals.
Infant’s motor response capabilities – mostly reflexive
Physical and Cognitive
Development
•
– Newborns can see and hear reasonably
well
– Grasp reflex
• infant will hang for minute or more – lost by 3-4
months
– Rooting reflex
– Sucking reflex
Loss of reflexes as frontal lobes and other inhibitory centers
develop
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
• Swiss psychologist
• Cognitive development
• Made almost all of his
observations on his own 3
children–not very good
science–profound impact on
ideas about child development
and education
• Epistemology – study of
knowing – How do we know?
Infant’s sensory capabilities
•
Non-nutritive sucking procedure for studying
sensory and cognitive capabilities
•
Vision estimated at 20/150 – focus best at 9
inches – prefer face to other figures
•
Can discriminate tones and have
preferences for voice sounds even before
birth – infants learn voices
Piaget’s Theory
A stage theory
• We progress through a series of qualitatively different,
discreet and necessary stages–all children go through
stages in the same order if not at the same age
• Our cognitive machinery is qualitatively different at
different stages of development.
• We cannot do certain mental operations at younger ages
because we just do not have the mental machinery
Stages according to Piaget’s
theory
Piaget’s Theory
• Schema – Schemata
– a cognitive structure or pattern by which we organize
the world
• Assimilation
– we incorporate our experiences of the world into
existing schemata
• Accommodation
– we also change schemata when necessary
Cognitive development is a continual process of assimilating
as long as possible and then accommodating by making
new schemata
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Sensorimotor Period – birth to 2 years
Preoperational Period – 2-7
Concrete Operations – 7-11
Formal Operations – 11 on
Substage 1: Birth-1 month
• Rigid, stereotyped reflexive actions
• Reflexive imitations
• No object concept
Substage 3: 4-8 months
Substage 2: 1-4 months
•
– actions that elicit responses from others (e.g,. cooing may elicit
smiling from another, and more cooing)
• Primary circular reactions
– actions and responses both involve
infants own body (e.g., sucking
thumb, laughing)
Secondary circular reactions
•
Creep, crawl, climb to explore
•
True imitation of actions baby already performs
• Exploration of body
•
First glimmerings of object concept
• Perceptual integration
•
Recognition memory helps establish:
• Eye-hand coordination
• Pseudoimitation
• No object concept
– Object permanence
– Social attachment
Developmental Studies of Object
Perception
Developmental Studies of Object
Perception
Developmental Studies of Object
Perception
Developmental Studies of Object
Perception
• Basic principles used by 4 month old
infants
– Cohesion – moving objects maintain their
shape and boundaries
– Contact – objects move together only if they
touch.
– Continuity – objects trace a continuous path
through space
If motion is smooth, then infants appear unsurprised by
change in object shape
Substage 4: 8-12 months
•
Communication by gesture and speech
•
Stereotyped actions applied to new objects
•
Observational learning through immediate
imitation of simple actions
•
Intentionality shown by:
– Removal of obstacles to obtain goals
– Use of instruments as tools
Substage 5: 12-18 months
• Tertiary circular reactions
– actions that lead to pleasing results lead infant to perform similar
actions (squeeze a duck get a response, now step on it)
• Perhaps some deferred imitation of very simple, single
actions
• Solution of problems through overt trial and error
• Searches for toy in last hiding place, but only if sees
researcher move it
• Uses tools in novel ways
Preoperational Stage
• 2-7 years
• child can now represent objects not present and can think
about actions that are not being performed – called
Representational Thinking
• Deferred imitation
– imitate behavior long after it was seen (can be
observed at the end of sensorimotor period after object
permanence develops)
Appearance-reality distinctions
• 2-3-year-olds do not easily
discriminate what things look like from
what things are
• Problem is dual nature of object and
conflicting information
• Occurs in many cultures
• Resists simple training
Concrete Operations Stage
• Classification
– concrete operational child can classify objects
into hierarchies and, unlike the preoperational
child, can think about addition of classes – sort
8 poodles, 3 cats, and 2 collies – If asked “are
there more dogs or poodles?” the
preoperational child will say poodles, concrete
operational child will say dogs
Preoperational Stage
• Failure of conservation
– liquid quantity
– number (checkers)
– mass (clay)
• These occur because the child cannot think of
both dimensions at the same time and trade one
off against the other
Concrete Operations Stage
• 7-11 years
• child is able to manipulate 2 variables at the same
time so has developed schemas necessary for
conservation – the child can mentally coordinate
the two states of the liquid in the glass for
example.
Concrete Operations Stage
• Concrete child cannot think hypothetically or carry
out systematic hypothesis testing. On a fulcrum
problem, for example, concrete operations child
can add or subtract weights OR if weights are
unequal in distance, can move one closer or
farther but can not do both to achieve balance
• Formal operations child can do this – marked by
systematic hypothesis testing of several variables
Understanding false beliefs:
A key test of understanding another’s
mental state
• Wimmer & Perner (1983) devised a task to assess
children’s ability to take into account what someone else
thinks..
• In their task, children were shown a story where a character comes to
believe something incorrect about the world. Children were required to
predict what action the character would take.
• Generally, children cannot pass the false belief task until they are 4years-old. They tend to predict that the character would act on the basis
of what the child themselves knew to be true – what Piaget would have
called ‘egocentrism’.
Upcoming
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Intelligence
Social development
Exam 2
Social cognition
Emerging Theory of Mind
• 3-5-year-olds distinguish
real from imagined objects
• False beliefs
• Requires differentiation of
self from others; mental vs.
physical world